Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has revealed his original band name for the thrash metal legends, now known as Metallica.
“I had always called us, as a group, the ‘Four Horsemen.’ Before I was in Metallica, I really loved this band called Montrose, and their guitarist was Ronnie Montrose. He went on to form a band called Gamma. One of their records [1980’s Gamma 2] had a shark fin cutting through the grass, which I thought was so awesome. Anyway, he had a song on there called ‘Four Horsemen’ that I did with my band Panic, which I was with before Metallica.
So when I joined Metallica, I had the song ‘Mechanix,’ which I wrote, and ‘Four Horsemen’ was a suggestion of mine to do ’ cause, we were doing cover songs. So that had planted the seed with James. And one day when we were coming to rehearsal, Lars had just said something about slowing down my song, ‘Mechanix.’ I had just gotten to the studio with Cliff, and we had been listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I was being a jerk, so I played “Sweet Home Alabama” instead of ‘Mechanix,’ and that’s basically the middle part of what would become Metallica’s ‘Four Horsemen.’”
The interview is part of the ‘Big Four Weeks,’ series from Revolver and Guitar world, which leads up to the Big Four show at Yankee Stadium, on September 14. Both sites will be releasing exclusive Big Four content each day, for the next four weeks. You can read the full article here.
You can also check out some old-school footage of Mustaine and Metallica in full swing, below.
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